Imperial Apothecary or Pharmacy knife.

[eveled]

Not much info on these knives out there. I'd love to know how many were made, and why they were made. They pop up from time to time, I know they are not really rare, but kind of scarce. Weird thing is they always look unused.

I mainly focus on the MIL-K stainless utility knives, so this one is almost one. Differences being no bail, and smaller bottle and can openers. Still close enough to include as a variant.

I know what the mortar and pestle is, but what is the other thing? Some type of lamp or incense burner? It is hanging on chains, the chains are on a hook, that is hung from the pivot pin. Nice detail.

[edge213]

I've never seen one.

[mrwatch]

I do not know either but, I would consider it too be Leach jar. apothecary's sold leaches from them for blood letting in the old day's. Did they really cure anything?

[eveled]

A friend in the pharmacy field thought maybe an ampule to hold liquid medication, or a distillation vile. Searches don't yield any matches.

A leech jar makes perfect sense. A Google search yields a lot of variants, but you can see similarities. I think you are right.

Strange they chose that as a symbol, and avoided the snake around either the staff, or chalice.

[1967redrider]

Saving your picture to my cellphone, I'm going to swing by the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum in Old Town Alexandria on Monday and see if I can get some info for you on the symbols.

[jxr1197]

It's a show globe on the knife

[deo-pa]

it's a show globe on the knife

Yep, you can read about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Show_globe

http://www.ebay.com/gds/THE-FACTS-AND-F ... 075/g.html

Dennis

[eveled]

Wow! Show globe it is then. Thank you very much guys. Those "hanging trademark for the illiterate shoppers" have always fascinated me. So I am surprised I never heard of the pharmacy show globe before.

Thanks again. Hopefully someday somebody will find this thread and tell us about the knife itself. Ed

[1967redrider]

The apothecary museum is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays but I did stop in on Thursday during lunchtime. It is indeed a Show Globe, which was a sign used to let people know it was an apothecary, much like the barber's blue and red striped pole. A mortal and pestal was used as a sign too, in the times when not too many people knew how to read. Unfortunately, they did not have a leech jar, otherwise I would have taken a picture of it, but they said leech jars were in every apothecary into the 20th century.

[eveled]

Thanks redrider,. That was a lot of effort, I appreciate it. Is it safe to assume they didn't have one of these knives on display?

[1967redrider]

They did not but enjoyed looking at it. We probably talked for 20 minutes and then I had to get back to work. Very nice people working there.

[Vit_213]

My Apothecary knife

[1967redrider]

Two great examples.

[Vit_213]

Definitely, this knife is not spin-off of a military Demo knife.
I have two military Demo knives (1960 and 2005) and I compared this knife with them.
Closed length military Demo knife - 3.76", this knife - 3.71"
Thickness military Demo knife - 0.48", this knife - 0.39"
The remaining differences are better seen in the pictures.

[Vit_213]

Comparison with scout knives of different years of release gave more similar elements.

[Mustanger]

Sooo...It's a Demo knife with a scout sized screwdriver, can opener and no clevis. Gotcha.

spin-off
NOUN
a byproduct or incidental result of a larger project:
"the commercial spin-off from defense research"

(just for fun)

[Vit_213]

I do not know the numbering of patterns in-house Imperial, but I know Camillus was making Demo knives and Scout knives for Imperial. And it was different patterns: Demo - #5693; Scout - #5779.
This knife is obviously made according to the Scout pattern, although the metal scales make it look like a Demo knife.
Sorry for my English

[jerryd6818]

Vit, your English is fine. You have nothing to apologize for. At least you can speak English. Do you see anyone here speaking Russian?

[eveled]

Great comparison pictures, no doubt it's a scout, not a demo. We pretty much nailed the images, which is cool. Mostly a knife has to have that big bottle opener to find a place in my collection. Which is why I didn't want to pay the crazy eBay prices for this one.

Hopefully somebody will find this thread someday that knows why or when they were made. A model number would be cool too. I think it would have had to of been a custom order.

Maybe that info is lost to time?

Maybe it was a new plan to release a new knife for every trade ever. Alphabetical order. Apothecary first, but it did not sell well so the plan was stopped, the never got to Astrologer, Beekeeper, Carpenter, Dentist..........Just kidding.

It doesn't look like a giveaway knife, there is no place for advertising. My guess a trade show or something similar. Or maybe a pharmacy school. Still you'd expect a name and a date.

[Vit_213]

Thank you, Jerry
Google allowed us to communicate without even knowing the language. But sometimes his translation brings to a stupor .
You can see for yourself by looking at the knife sections on the largest Russian weapon portal:
http://forum.guns.ru/forumtopics/5.html
http://forum.guns.ru/forumtopics/64.html
sorry for off

[Vit_213]

I still hope to find out more about this knife .

[eveled]

It’s hard to believe how little information is out there for this knife. They aren’t even all that rare, but nobody knows anything more. Still hoping this thread and the one that you started on another forum drag something into the light.

[cody6268]

I wonder if Lilly was involved? I know of a small watch fob'/pen knife with two blades Imperial made for Lilly, and before that, Schrade was making a three blade (spear, file, Wharncliffe/trach blade, bail) for them (which I have, somewhere), also a watch fob based on the Slim Senator.

Obviously, it had to be a giveaway, given like most pharmaceutical ad knives, there's tons of them, and few that actually look like someone carried and used it.

[jxr1197]

Obviously, it had to be a giveaway, given like most pharmaceutical ad knives, there's tons of them, and few that actually look like someone carried and used it.

I would lean in the other direction and suggest that this was a retail piece made to sell in drug stores, which was an important conduit to customers back then. I collect pharmaceutical knives (close relative worked at Pfizer for 30 years) and without fail every single one I come across is the cheapest little shell handled jack they could order - the exception being award knives which could get pricey. The other problem with this knife being a giveaway is the lack of advertising. Why buy expensive knives for advertising and then distribute them without any branding? Would never happen. I expanded on it more in the same thread running on Bladeforums. In a nustshell, IKAC spent truckloads of money in the 1950s trying to drive up their retail presence in pharmacies and my guess was that this knife was plucked from a cardboard display on the counter of a drug store.

[Maddogfl]

Obviously, it had to be a giveaway, given like most pharmaceutical ad knives, there's tons of them, and few that actually look like someone carried and used it.

I would lean in the other direction and suggest that this was a retail piece made to sell in drug stores, which was an important conduit to customers back then. I collect pharmaceutical knives (close relative worked at Pfizer for 30 years) and without fail every single one I come across is the cheapest little shell handled jack they could order - the exception being award knives which could get pricey. The other problem with this knife being a giveaway is the lack of advertising. Why buy expensive knives for advertising and then distribute them without any branding? Would never happen. I expanded on it more in the same thread running on Bladeforums. In a nustshell, IKAC spent truckloads of money in the 1950s trying to drive up their retail presence in pharmacies and my guess was that this knife was plucked from a cardboard display on the counter of a drug store.

I am reviving this morbid thread as it was used as a reference in a current thread and has interest to me as a recent owner of an identical knife. Forgive me.

I find it difficult to accept, without some evidence, the supposition that this knife would appeal to the customers of the pharmacy, but do believe that it would have a strong following among the people of the profession. I used to get "gifts" from plumbing suppliers, and I admit that they gifts always had the company name or logo on the gifts, so that does make the poster's (that I am quoting) suggestion that the blade may not have been a similar type of gift. So, the point (forgive the pun) of the blade remains a mystery to me.

Now, waxing philosophical, as old men are subject to do, a big part of the appeal of collecting vintage or antique items is the mystery of the history. I have found that as I grow into old age, history, which has always appealed to me, has taken on an enhanced value. Perhaps it is inevitable that as we accept our personal mortality as a fact rather than a theory, that we appreciate what was, and is now gone, more than we did when we were young and seemingly immortal.